The Earl of Windermere Takes a Wife (Lords of the Matrix Club #1)

by Jen YatesNZ

  ‘No. But we have never tried to discuss anything like this, anything with the depth of depravity inherent in this.’

  Jassie’s hands dropped to his shoulders for a moment. They were warm, soft. God, he wanted her. Her lips pressed to the top of his head and he had to clench his hands round his knees to keep from grasping for everything she offered.

  ‘Don’t,’ he whispered. ‘You—distract me and I-will-not-be-distracted in that way.’

  Gently he closed his hands over hers and returned them to his head. The massaging was soothing. He could handle that.

  ‘I’ll tell you what happened, Jass. But you must promise—no interruptions. No distractions. Let me just tell it and then—let’s see if we can talk. You see, one of the things that has kept my lips sealed all these years is the deep down conviction that anyone knowing about—this—will have an abiding abhorrence of me thereafter. I don’t think I would survive you reacting that way.’

  Her fingers clenched reflexively in his hair.

  ‘Rogan Wyldefell,’ she hissed between clenched teeth, ‘how dare you doubt the strength and depth and endurance of my love for you!’

  ‘Easily, Jass. I have such a deep abiding abhorrence for myself.’

  ‘Oh Rogan,’ she whispered, slipping her hands from his head. Sliding them around his neck, she held him with all her strength, her face pressed against his hair. ‘I love you—unconditionally.’

  The words were a balm to his lacerated soul—but still a craven part of him feared to believe.

  ‘We’ll see, hmm?’

  The sensation of her holding him was almost too precious to endure, especially when his mind kept reminding him that the more sensual memories he allowed her to make the more he would have to regret and yearn for when she turned from him in disgust, as he knew she must.

  He threaded his fingers through hers and held her hands against his throat. She had small, strong hands. He’d often imagined them—don’t go there Windermere. Just tell the goddamn story.

  ‘When you were twenty-one, Rogan, what happened?’

  Her breath ruffled his hair and he rather imagined she was deeply content to be sitting so with him—as was he. Enjoy it while you may, his inner voice snarled. Once she knows what you have to tell her she will simply be—repelled.

  I love you unconditionally, she’d said. It would be his talisman. There was nothing else to cling to. He’d told this story once to Bart. It should be easier a second time though somehow he had to find the courage to tell Jassie all of it.

  He closed his eyes and once again he was in the large terrace house in Oxford where he’d boarded with a half dozen other young men.

  ‘I boarded in the house of a professor when I went to university. He was probably in his late forties but he had a young wife, much younger. She was something out of every young man’s dreams. Idiot that I was, I thought life had been very good to me.’

  Jassie pressed her lips to his hair.

  ‘Go on,’ she whispered.

  ‘The professor was often out in the evenings, tutoring or at meetings. One would’ve thought he might have known better than to leave such a—hot, hungry bitch alone in a house full of testosterone ridden young men.’

  He stopped and wiped a hand across his sweating brow.

  ‘I’m sorry, Jass. I shouldn’t have said that but—I think the only way I can tell it, is like that. Can you bear with me? It’s an ugly tale and the only language that seems to suit it is the profane.’

  ‘Rogan, just tell it. Forget I’m sitting here listening to you. Just get every ugly detail out of your heart, off your conscience and to hell with how you have to tell it! You and Philip didn’t raise me to be a prissy-mouthed prude.’

  ‘No, but I’m sure my mother tried.’

  She snorted. Nothing lady-like in that. He clutched her fingers a little more tightly. Forgetting her presence was impossible when finally her small hands were caressing him as he’d so often dreamed. He shuddered in a breath and continued.

  ‘I think now that I wasn’t the only one she so entranced, though that didn’t occur to me at the time—probably wouldn’t have worried me either. I was ignorant and arrogant enough—to think I was doing her a favor. But she—wanted more than I was prepared to give. She began harassing me to—let her tie me up, promising I’d love it, especially if she were to—stimulate me with whip and belt.’

  He managed to ignore Jassie’s inrush of breath and continue.

  ‘She also wanted me to tie her up and use a riding crop on her—or my bare hand. Apparently she found that kind of stimulation very exciting. If I would let her show me, maybe I’d—accept her domination as well. God! I was a stupid, horny young bastard but I was not into deviant stuff. The thought of—doing any of the stuff she talked about actually—nauseated me.’

  He couldn’t restrain a groan at the memory.

  ‘But I was so arrogant. I thought I could control the situation. Sex was—pretty much all I thought about at that age.—It’s all most young men think about at that age,’ he added bitterly, his mind spiraling down into that place where guilt rode him relentlessly.

  ‘What happened?’

  What hadn’t happened?

  ‘I think she must’ve laced my ale at dinner with laudanum. Then she slipped me a note to say she’d come by my room later and suggested I should be naked and ready for her.—So as soon as dinner was over I went upstairs, stripped and lay down to wait. I felt strangely tired and the next thing I knew was waking up gagged and with my wrists bound and secured to the head board. She’d obviously been working at arousing me before she decided to wake me—in a very painful way.’

  Hell! He couldn’t tell her that!

  ‘How?’

  The word was a whisper against his hair. He swallowed.

  ‘I think she bit my balls—hard.’

  Jassie jerked involuntarily against his back and he muttered another apology.

  ‘Don’t apologize,’ she hissed. ‘Just talk. It’s way past time you told someone instead of trying to hold it all in. It’s destroying you, Rogan. It’s destroying us.’

  Fingers still entwined with his, she slid her hands a little lower to cover his heart. It felt as if she channeled her own strength into him.

  ‘Yeah.—Um—She waved a small, deadly looking dagger before my eyes and threatened to cut out my balls so I’d never—be able to function as a man—if I didn’t do exactly as she ordered. She actually made a small nick—’

  Jassie’s fingers flexed against his heart. Breathe, he reminded himself. Just—breathe and keep talking.

  ‘She prodded me over and up onto my knees, which she then secured to the head of the bed as well, so my butt was—embarrassingly exposed. I was trussed on my knees like a f—goddamn Christmas goose! I was so angry I tried to rip the headboard from the bed. I finally reasoned that maybe if I just let her have her way she’d set me free—and then I’d make her f—s—sorry.—Do you know anything about—um—hell! Do you have any idea what a—a cock ring is?’

  ‘N—no. Not really. Though I guess—it’s what it says it is.’

  ‘Yeah—this one was like a split ring and—she put it on me. Then she set about arousing me in every deviant way imaginable—and unimaginable; she fastened some sort of clamps to my nipples that were so painful I was yelling. I tried to slide them off against the mattress but my knees were pulled up so tight I wasn’t able to get my chest low enough. And even though I was whimpering like—like a puling babe with the pain, my—I became very painfully aroused. The blood rushed in to my—penis—but the ring wouldn’t let it out again. Then she began—’

  How could he tell this beautiful woman of the ugly things the bitch had done to him? There was no language he could use that would make it in any way acceptable for her to hear.

  He rolled his head back on his shoulders and closed his eyes.

  ‘I can’t—’

  ‘You can.’

  ‘It’s ugly, sickening—’

&
nbsp; Her hands caressed up his neck, over his ears and back into his hair. The magic of her fingers against his scalp eased the panic swelling in his chest.

  ‘That’s why you have to say it. All of it. It’s festering inside of you like a great, poisonous canker. What-did-she-do-to-you?’

  ‘She m—massaged my butt with oil, and shoved her fingers into me—there—and finally jammed in something cold and metallic that felt as big as—felt huge. I think she enjoyed me yelling in pain. The gag and the pillows must have muffled it because no one came to see what was wrong. Then she stroked more oil over my b—balls and penis until I was so hard I thought I’d burst. But I couldn’t come because of the f—damn cock ring. My—cock—penis—felt like it was going to explode.

  ‘I knew the bitch was enjoying hearing me scream so I tried to think of something to take my mind off it. I recited mathematical equations, Shakespeare and Latin declensions but nothing would close out that torturous fire building behind my c—penis. At that point, when I thought I couldn’t take any more, she began flogging me with a leather flail, the tails of which nipped and stung with a deadly precision. She’d obviously had a lot of practice with that infernal piece of torture. I was moaning constantly against the gag by this stage, unable to distinguish whether I was feeling exquisite pain or the most intense pleasure. I think I lost my mind about then. If I was finding any pleasure in this fucking torture I was a sick bastard.’

  He’d been trying not to let the coarser profanities creep into his tale but the memories of that night were so profane it was inevitable.

  ‘I’m sorry Jassie. So sorry. I didn’t mean to say that—’

  ‘Will you stop damn well apologizing!’

  Leaping to his feet he stalked back to the doorway, braced his hands high against either side of the frame and dragged in gulps of refreshing air.

  Jassie was immediately behind him, rubbing her hands rhythmically up and down his back.

  ‘It’s all right, Rogan. You can do it. What happened next?’

  ‘She released my knees though she left my wrists bound together and still leashed to the headboard. When she told me to roll over I complied with alacrity, thinking she was about to untie my hands. But she was still a long way from granting me any kind of release. She straddled me, impaling herself on—on my p—penis, so distended and painful I couldn’t stop myself from just moaning and moaning—and begging her to let me come.

  ‘The bitch pleasured herself to oblivion—and then she untied me. I still hadn’t come because of the damned cock ring and it was as if all the remaining blood in my body rushed to my brain.—Oh God!’

  His legs were shaking. He had no choice but to fold where he was, sinking down to sit on the step. Jassie came down beside him, her arm across his shoulders.

  ‘Go on,’ she whispered.

  He dropped his head onto his hands and continued, talking to his boots.

  ‘Quicker than the bitch could blink, and regardless of how hard she fought—though I suspect that was just for the pleasure of it—God she was perverted!—Anyway I very quickly had her secured exactly as she’d had me, gagged, manacled and on her knees with her ar—butt in the air. I was so far gone I didn’t even think to remove the cock ring and I rammed straight into her backside and fucked and fucked until her muffled cries were silenced and I began to wonder whether she’d passed out. Finally I thought to rip off the cock ring and my release was so violent and explosive it was a dreadful kind of pleasure pain—that to this day, I—long to feel again.’

  The last few words were a mere whisper, but he’d had to say them, admit out loud the depth of his depravity.

  ‘Bloody hell!’

  He wrapped his hands round his head and groaned.

  ‘Rogan! None of this is your fault! Stop flaying yourself. What did you do then?’

  ‘I collapsed beside her wondering if I might be going to cry but thinking that at least I’d showed her how—wrong—her actions were—how painful. Then I became worried because she’d gone silent, so I ripped off her gag—and the first words out of her mouth were, —‘God, Wyldefell, you were magnificent!

  ‘I can’t describe how that made me feel—like—impotent with fury because no matter what I did to her, it would never—could—never be punishment because she enjoyed it!—It sent me a little insane, I think. I untied her wrists—only her wrists—and made her remove the thing she’d shoved in my—butt.’

  He stopped to draw several fortifying breaths, squeezed his eyes shut and said, ‘Then I bound and gagged her again and flogged her until there were welts on her backside and then I fucked her until I exploded again, so violently, so stupendously, I can’t ever seem to forget it.—Finally I shoved her out of my room, and threatened her with death if she came anywhere near me again. I left that house the very next day.’

  He didn’t tell her that he believed Adelaide Barratt may have used Philip in the same way or at least had been threatening to. He could spare her that.

  Jassie’s head rested on his shoulder and her hand continued to rub rhythmically up and down his spine.

  ‘So—when you make—love to me, what happens? Have you developed the need for more of that kind—of—sex?’

  ‘Not really—it’s more like a compulsion,’ Rogan muttered, dimly aware there was moisture on his cheeks and he swiped at it absently. ‘When I make love to a woman there inevitably comes a point when the man I always believed I was, disappears and some ravening monster takes his place and it’s no longer anything to do with making love. It’s about the same time all women merge and become that one in my mind; that one, who so deeply humiliated me and denied me the satisfaction of revenge by thoroughly enjoying everything I dished out. Every woman becomes that perverted bitch that I have to—succeed—in punishing.’

  Convulsively he turned and folded Jassie in his arms, pressing her precious head against his chest.

  ‘That’s why I’ve tried so hard to keep our relationship to—friendship. I love you Jass. I can’t deny it and I never should have tried. I should have told you all this long since so you understood why I could never make you mine. I cannot bear to drag you into my darkness. I—ache with a terrible agony whenever I think of what I did to you on our wedding night. And I can’t get the memory of it out of my mind—or the look in your eyes afterwards. I love you, Jassie, but I cannot be a true husband to you. I’ll not risk hurting you like that again.’

  Jassie reached up and cupped his face in her hands.

  ‘I understand. Kiss me, Rogan. I love you so much.’

  ‘God, Jass, don’t,’ he pleaded, his voice scarcely more than a raspy whisper. ‘You un-man me with your love. I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve you. I’ll not put you at risk again. I realize that if I don’t come home, at least as much as I used to, we might as well not have bothered to get married. But don’t tempt me to make love to you. I can’t resist because you are everything I’ve ever wanted. But I love you too much to subject you to—the—animal I become. The only way I can do this is to go back to how we were—before—Neave Tor.’

  Her eyes were like bruised golden pansies, gazing up at him and as he watched they filled with tears that welled and rolled down her cheeks.

  ‘I’ll try, Rogan,’ she muttered at last, swiping impatiently at the moisture on her face. ‘But—I’m not sure I can go back to how I was—before Neave Tor. I—will try though, if that’s what you really want.’

  ‘I do,’ he said gently, and thumbed the rest of the tears from her pale skin. ‘Why don’t you go in and get Ruby to make you a tisane or something. I think I’ll walk for a while, if you don’t mind.—I feel kind of—stripped.’

  She started to protest but he laid his finger across her lips.

  ‘T’is best this way.’

  Her mouth tightened, the last spark of hope died from her eyes and she turned from him to walk down the steps. She glanced back once, and then stuffing her fist in her mouth, turned and ran back along the lake edge and under the tr
ees towards the Abbey.

  He watched until she disappeared from view then sank back to the step once again to sit staring into nothing—nowhere—never at all—and wondered how he would bear it.

  Her first instinct was to run to the stables and demand Dobbie saddle Chester again but though she knew the faithful animal would carry her wherever she needed to go, she’d asked enough of him today. The place she wanted most to be was in her own suite of rooms at Brantleigh Manor but it really was time she started behaving like the Countess she’d become. She’d brought all of this on her own head with her wanton desire to know how it was to be loved by a man—no—loved by the Earl of Windermere.

  Would it have been better to have left well alone, to have continued simply as best friends? Would she put the clock back if she could? Could she even wish to go back to being that untouched, innocent virgin in danger of sinking further into bitterness with each passing year?

  She didn’t think so and yet—when compared to the life she could be forced to live now, there was a certain wistful appeal to that innocence.

  With her mind so busy her feet took her where they would and suddenly she found herself striding through the cloisters with enough raging energy to rouse the spirits of the monks who’d walked here in ancient times. She slowed her steps but continued moving towards the arched portico of the chapel where she and Rogan had pledged their vows to one another a few short weeks ago.

  Maybe if she sat for a while in the hallowed space where the pale stone walls and high clerestory windows created an atmosphere of light wherein negativity was difficult to maintain, she could bring some of that light into her ravaged heart. If there was any place that would lift her spirits and empower her to be the woman she had to be as the wife of the 8th Earl of Windermere, it was this beautiful little chapel whose only adornment was the light within.

  Lifting the heavy iron latch, she opened the oak door, stepped into the sun-shafted sanctuary and closed the door gently again at her back. A natural wood cross, believed to be a relic from when the Abbey had been a thriving religious community back in medieval times, stood on the unadorned wooden altar, flanked by two equally ancient heavy silver candlesticks.